It has been nine years, and I still do not know what normal is.
My dad passed away nine years ago, and my life has never been the same. I remember that day like the back of my hand — the suddenness, the shock and the trauma that still follows me.
While I can recount that day in vivid detail, my memories of him keep fading. I was only twelve when he passed away — young compared to my sisters, who were already adults. I often feel like someone stole my childhood memories away from me. My life is divided into two parts: before and after.
Now, as I prepare to graduate from college, I find myself moving through milestones my dad will never get to see. He was not there to take pictures before prom or to sit in the audience at my high school graduation. He will not be there when I walk across the stage this spring or when I eventually walk down the aisle.
Losing a parent as a child means growing up twice — once like everyone else, and again when you realize the person who was supposed to guide you through adulthood is gone. I had to learn how to navigate through student loans, relationships and career decisions without his input. It is strange to build a life that he will never get to know.
Still, I try to hold onto his advice, even if I received much of it secondhand through my sisters — Emily, Bailey and Jessica, who now runs the small liquor store he owned. They like to share little pieces of him with me when they can, the sayings he repeated, the ways he made them laugh and the lessons he tucked deftly into his jokes. From them, I have learned the kinds of things I imagine he would tell me now. He was blunt, sometimes too honest, but never mean-spirited. He believed in hard work, in showing up even when someone did not feel like it.
He taught my sisters that you do not have to have everything figured out (he sure did not!). You just have to keep trying, always putting your best foot forward. His favorite phrase was “life is good.” He said it all the time, signed it in every birthday card, not as a throwaway line but as a consistent philosophy. Even when business was slow or life got messy, he would shrug with a smile on his face and remind everyone that things have a way of working out.
Sometimes, a girl just needs her dad. When life feels uncertain, I still catch myself wondering what he would say or do. But I also know that his influence did not vanish with him — it lives in the way I treat people, in the music I listen to, in the determination that keeps me going.
As I step into this new chapter of adulthood, I am realizing that maybe “normal” is not something you return to — it is something you rebuild.
Nine years later, I still wish I could call him. But I also know he would be proud that I kept moving forward, even when I did not know how. Grief does not end; it grows with you, reshaping itself into love that never leaves.